Bill Kendrick's 10-liner TurboBASIC XL Games
for NOMAM 2014 Competition
About the competition
Via a post on the"Atari 8-bit" group on Facebook (also on AtariAge forums), I learned about a programming competition for the 2014 NOMAM ("Not Only Marvellous Atari Machines") retro meeting in Germany.
Requirements of the competition
- 10 lines of Turbo Basic XL code (pure Atari Basic is also allowed)
- It must be a game
- Input medium of the game arbitrarily (joystick , paddle , keyboard, ... )
- Abbreviations may be used to increase the maximum line length
- No reloading of data or parts of the program
- Call of machine language programs is not permitted ( X = USR ( 1536) )
- POKing is allowed (eg change the DL, PM graphics)
I know and enjoy TurboBASIC XL, and attempted to write countless
games using it in the early 1990s, so decided to give it a try.
My Games
In order of creation...
- Paddleship
— tied for 17th place, "regular lines" category
Navigate a space ship, similar to Computer Space,
Space War and Asteroids,
but using a paddle controller.
- Shmup
— tied for 17th place, "regular lines" category
A simple scrolling shoot 'em up.
- Planets
— tied for 17th place, "regular lines" category
A two-player game where you fire missiles at each other's planets;
an outer-space variation of artillery games.
- Slice
— tied for 17th place, "regular lines" category
Using the Atari Touch Tablet, try to grab objects before they hit the top
of the screen
- Minijong
— tied for 9th place, "regular lines" category
A tiny mahjong solitaire game (e.g., Shanghai).
- Minidash
— tied for 9th place, "regular lines" category
A tiny Boulder Dash-style game.
- Maze
— 2nd place, "regular lines" category!
A maze game.
- Bagh Chal
— tied for 17th place, "regular lines" category
A two-player Nepalese board game, "Bagh Chal" (tigers vs. goats).
- Isol
— tied for 9th place, "long lines" category
A two- to four-player turn-based board game (based on
"Isolation" for the C=64).
The results are in!
The results of the contest are in! Most of my games tied for lower-rankings, along with many other entries, but I'm proud to report that "Maze" earned 2nd place in the "regular lines" category!
Contratulations the 1st place winners, Xuel ("Jump!", regular lines)
and pirx ("2047", long lines). And, of course, 'thanks' and congratulations
to everyone else who participated... some of whom were playing with
TurboBASIC XL for the first time (shockingly!)
Bill Kendrick, 2014,
nbs@sonic.net,
New Breed Software